On Thursday, the medical license of abortionist Theodore Herring was suspended after the Texas Medical Board discovered that Herring had been brazenly committing abortions despite non-compliance with Texas law. The new law, House Bill 2 which passed in during the second special session of the Legislature last summer, mandates that he secure admitting privileges at a nearby hospital in order to carry out his gruesome profession. This admitting privileges requirement went into effect on October 31 of last year. Yet, within less than a week of its effective date, Herring was back in the abortion action, demonstrating his wanton disregard for THE LAW.

On February 13, 2014, a disciplinary panel of the Texas Medical Board temporarily suspended, without notice, the Texas medical license of Houston physician Theodore M. Herring, Jr., M.D., after determining his continuation in the practice of medicine poses a continuing threat to public welfare. The suspension was effective immediately. The board found between November 6, 2013 and February 7, 2014, Dr. Herring unlawfully performed 268 abortion procedures without holding active admitting privileges at a hospital that provides obstetrical or gynecological health care services located no further than 30 miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced in violation of Texas health and safety code 171.0031(a)(1). The temporary suspension remains in place until the board takes further action.

Unfortunately, Herring does not appear to be the sole ‘bad apple’ unlawfully operating an abortion mill. Another abortionist in Texas, Lester Minto, has also eluded the law, an accomplishment he proudly shared with Slate. He said that, in spite of not having admitting privileges at his practice in Harlingen, HB2’s provisions have not shut down his business.

On the contrary, Minto openly admitted that he encourages women to carry out the dangerous practice of self-induced abortions with a drug that only obtained for such off-label usage in Mexico: misoprostol. The drug’s on-label usage is to treat ulcers, and in the US, women of childbearing age must test negative for pregnancy before a doctor will legally prescribe misoprostol. The drug is categorized in the FDA’s “pregnancy category X,” meaning that it is fatal to pre-born children and potentially deadly for their mothers. Minto instructs women how to secure the drug in Mexico, then to start the self-induced abortion, and then to go to Minto to complete the incomplete abortion, which he treats as a miscarriage, thereby circumventing the new law.

Both Minto and Herring demonstrate a disturbing trend among abortionists at large: turning a profit from abortion by selling a harmful [and always fatal to one of the patients]procedure to vulnerable, desperate women. These abortionists do not care about or seek to protect women’s health; rather they are so profit-driven that they will break the law to line their pockets.

Because of Herring’s audacity, at least 268 children who could have been spared by the law are now dead, and inestimable harm has been done to their mothers at the hands of a careless man.

Texas Right to Life applauds the Texas Medical Board for investigating Herring’s compliance with HB2, passed to prevent tragedies like those committed by Drs. Herring and Minto. Women have been spared the detrimental effects of abortion, and children have been saved due to other abortion mills closing due to non-compliance with HB2. Until every Herring and Minto has been barred from committing abortion, and the provisions of HB2 have been safeguarded in their entirety by the final verdict of the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Pro-Life Texans will have their work cut out for them.